R500 onboard diagnostics

[mvaudio]

Hello.
I am new to the forum, having just found it (to my delight..), and I have a quick question regarding diagnostics for the Thinkpad R500. I also have a T440p, and on that machine I can press F10 while booting, and it will go into a DOS diagnostic mode with tests available for much of the hardware.

Does anyone know if there is a way to do that on the R500? I know the R500 is a very old model, but I have always liked it better than almost all the other Thinkpads I have used, and I would like to have some diagnostics to help me resolve any issues.

Thanks in advance for any help, and a big thank you to Bill for all his long hours and effort over the years providing this excellent resource.

[TPFanatic]

If you press Esc at the ThinkPad Splashscreen it will show some useless info. Within the BIOS (press F12 at the Splashscreen) there is a tool to check the Hard drive for errors. That’s it for R500. Possibly tell more about the issues it’s having and someone might know something helpful.

[mvaudio]

OK, TPFanatic.. thanks! I rather suspected this was the case, but I try not to assume. I don't really have any current issues with the machine, other than a loose/broken lid hinge. The T440p, on the other hand, is doing some odd things that point to a bad lid cable, and I was looking at going back to the R500. Having this forum will be very helpful in getting all the issues sorted. Thanks again.